Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating *

Cast: Madison Iseman, Paloma Kwiatkowski, Jenny Raven, Munro Chambers, Atticus Mitchell, Ajay Friese, Carson MacCormac, Evan Marsh, Jordana Blake, Jake Sim, Callan Potter, Keanu Lee Nunes, Darren Eisnor, Stafani Kimber, Alexandre Bourgeois, Vinson Tran, Chris Mark, Robyn Alomar, Nicolas Aqui, Mason Moon Moorhouse, Joseph Curto.

Missed opportunities within storytelling are ones lost to the ether, perhaps forever, and certainly to the shame of the writer.

The modern day may have many benefits, however, the art of the statement has become lost in the various ways of what can only be termed designed with the everybody in mind, designed by committee catch all title of entitled group opinion, one that sees a flourishing idea drowned in want by all that surrounds it.

Riot Girls is a film that has that ideal and great notion almost erased from what was surely an excellent premise, distilled downwards, avenues unexplored, the meaning left to hang in the air as if forgotten, and the reason why left to become a shallow husk of explanation. The noble foundation found to be built on sand.

It is always a shame when such occurrences transpire in cinema, the unexplored playing on the mind of the watcher with alarming consistency than the enjoyment of the narrative or the action could manage. It is disappointing to find yourself immersed in the what if rather than losing time to a story that grips and allows the mind to be sated and satisfied.

Set in an alternative past where all adults have died due to a mysterious plague, the children set up their own factions, Red Dawn and Children Of God meets Lord Of The Flies, but with the gathering cut short and no promise of an agenda agreed to. We perhaps ask to much of writer’s now, we want to be informed of every minute detail, we leave nothing to the imagination, but a fact of order, of why the plague arose, why only adults died, would surely be a must for the audience to then place their sympathy with the two sides at war.

When a great premise is then left to find its way through the metaphorical fog, it then becomes a sense of betrayal to the story, and unfortunately for Riot Girls, it is one that shapes the whole dynamic of the film, from the bottom up it presents itself as half finished, a real shame for all concerned. A film that doesn’t explore is lost from the start, hardly a riot, more of a gentle, playful skirmish in the sun.

Ian D. Hall